


Immolation

by BlindWolfGrasshopper



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Lenore is awful, M/M, Masturbation, Post Season 3, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23584846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindWolfGrasshopper/pseuds/BlindWolfGrasshopper
Summary: Hector’s spiral into madness is abruptly interrupted when Lenore introduces him to her newest pet: the half-vampire son of the man Hector betrayed. But Alucard’s presence isn’t just another body in the bed Hector has come to loathe, it’s an opportunity for Hector to seize the freedom he’s been longing for.Freedom comes at a cost. What can Hector pay, now that he’s lost everything?
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Hector, Alucard/Hector (Castlevania)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> That's how the madness of the world attempts to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.  
> \- Jeff Vandermeer  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an eye out for new tw tags as the story progresses. Just... just count on all the triggers for this story. Sorry. It's gonna get wild.

The ledge of the porcelain bathtub is cold against Hector’s bare ass, but he barely notices because his mind is stuck on the snow-capped trees on the other side of the window. It’s the dead of night, with a bright white moon shining over the land, and he’s inside, leaning against the edge of the bath as it fills with water. Falling snow cuts across his view at a sharp angle—a storm is moving in and by morning he doubts he’ll be able to see out the window.

The trees are just past the territory Lenore allows him to go. He’s begged her to extend it just enough for him to venture into the forest, but she’s withheld that privilege from him thus far. Maybe she’s saving it as a reward after he does something that pleases her. Or maybe—most likely—she’s just cruel.

A hot sting wets his fingertips, hooked over the edge of the bath, and jerks his mind back into his cage. He strides to the faucet and turns the knobs to shut the water off before it overflows, cursing at the bath for being such an elaborate contraption and at himself for losing track of time again. The bath is an insanely luxurious innovation, hot water for bathing on demand, thanks to the pipes used to heat the castle. It’s part of the problem with Lenore and her sisters, Hector thinks. They get everything they want whenever they want it.

The drain at the bottom of the bath is misshapen through the ripples of the water. Hector tries not to look at it.

Sometimes if he closes his eyes when it’s quiet, all he can hear is the howling of the wind outside and it’s almost like he’s not imprisoned. He used to do the same thing when he was a boy, trapped inside his family’s tiny home by his father’s wrath over some sad creature Hector had saved from being abandoned in death. He’d wanted so desperately then to not be hated for what he could do. He’d have given anything for people to see his talents weren’t an abomination—they were good and useful.

In some cruel twist, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted and now he thinks he’d give anything to not be so useful.

He steps into the bath and sinks down, sending water splashing over the ledge and onto the floor. He closes his eyes, inhales. Listens to the wind. Exhales. Opens his eyes to the window that sits beyond the foot of the bath.

The forest is a blur through the snow.

As if on cue, the shaking starts. It emanates from his hands and reverberates up his forearms—he flexes his fingers under the water, squeezes them into fists in an attempt to control it. Nothing ever helps. He brings his hands through the surface of the water and grips the cool ledge of the bath as if holding onto something solid might help steady the quakes. Sometimes he fears his white-knuckled clutch might snap the edge of the bath.

The worst part of the shaking is the way it travels, from his hands, up his forearms, straight to his core—it goes _inside_ him, penetrates his chest, sends his heart racing, constricts his lungs so he can barely breathe. It shakes his mind, and all he can think of is Lenore beneath him, with crimson doe eyes and a hand reaching up, around his throat, the braided pattern of her ring pressed against his skin—a reminder that he doesn’t belong to himself anymore. He hasn’t belonged to himself for months now.

He swipes one of the painted glass soap bottles from the edge of the bath—there are three of them and he still hasn’t been able to figure out why on Earth anyone would need three bottles of soap. He’d investigated them the first time he used the washroom, under the impression that they might not all be soap. Each is a slightly different color and consistency, but they are, indeed, all soap. Lenore must think giving him soap options will distract from the fact that he doesn’t have any say in choices that actually matter to him.

The bath, the heated rooms, the soaps, it’s all so fucking meaningless in its extravagance.

He empties a glob into his hand and smears it into his hair, down his neck and across his shoulders and chest. She’d had her lips and her fingers and her skin everywhere on him and he wants every last trace gone. He lathers his torso, his groin, his legs, hands still shaking, and then takes a desperate gulp of air and sinks beneath the surface. He keeps his eyes pinched shut and works his fingertips through the hair that floats about him to scrub away Lenore and the soap. When he reemerges, he grabs the soap bottle and repeats the process. Lenore always reeks of spiced vanilla, and he’s learned it takes him at least three scrubs to get it all off.

Several scrubs later, he emerges from the bath raw and clean. He lets the drain swallow away the soapy water. The polished stone floor is slick with spillover from his bath, but his lids and body are heavy, and he can’t bring himself to care. He throws a few towels haphazardly around the floor and tells himself he’ll figure it out after he’s slept.

Hector makes his way straight from the washroom to the bedroom—the second bedroom. He’d spent his first day in his new home in awe of the sheer size of the space Lenore and her sisters simply gave to Lenore’s pet because it was meaningless to them. On Rhodes, he’d lived in one room. He’d eaten, slept, bathed, worked, and fucked all in one room. This place had two bedrooms, a washroom bigger than his entire home on Rhodes, a kitchen, and a fucking _parlor_.

Two bedrooms had seemed like another meaningless extravagance until he figured out that he couldn’t bear to sleep in the same bed Lenore made him use. So, the second bedroom had become his room. The first was reserved for Lenore’s visits.

In the second bedroom, he finds a clean nightshirt and slips into it. Before Lenore, he’d never slept in clothing unless it was cold enough to necessitate. Now, he can’t sleep without the pull of fabric against his skin. Sometimes he finds himself falling asleep fully clothed, fully covered.

The rising sun stains the snowy skyline yellow and pink and lavender when he pulls heavy velvet drapes over it. He shuts the bedroom door to block out the light from other rooms and collapses into the bed.

Under the covers, he stares up into the inky blackness of the ceiling wishing the weight of the nightshirt and blankets would drag him down into the mattress until he was smothered by it. Instead, he’ll fall asleep and dream of being out in the forest Lenore keeps him from, and he’ll wake with a painful sense of longing for something that he’d once taken for granted.

* * *

There was a time when Hector could lose himself in his work, but he can’t seem to lose himself in anything anymore. He thinks about the creatures he’s creating, about what they’re going to do at his command. He thinks of Lenore, and what he did at her command the night prior. He thinks of the people who will either be slaughtered or kept in cages, and he thinks of the braided ring around his finger.

His mind is like an obnoxious coworker, refusing to let him be, constantly reminding him of all his mistakes. He’s been a fucking idiot, and he’s painfully aware of it.

He drags another corpse from his daily pile onto his worktable, swings his hammer, watches the body transform. A great winged creature with four spindly limbs and a beak wobbles off the table, steps into life before him. It gives a shrill shriek. Hector has an urge to apologize to it.

If he’s ever free from this nightmare, he’s never going to touch that godforsaken hammer again.

“Hector,” Lenore’s voice nearly makes him jump out of his skin. The nightcreature turns from him, lumbers away down a long hallway that leads out into the night.

Lenore stands in the entryway to his workstation, leaning against the edge of the doorway and looking innocent and terrifying. He takes a step back even though she’s halfway across the room.

She smiles.

“Come with me Hector, I have something to show you.”

She can’t possibly be referring to sex, he reassures himself as he follows her from the room. She’s done that before—called on him midday to do the only thing he hates more than his work. She would have said something different though, something coy, like, “I need you,” or, “You have more important things to do right now.” It’s a game to her, and she seems to take great pleasure in being flirtatious with him. Just thinking of it makes him want to bathe again, but he’s learned quickly to hide his true reactions and play along unless he wants to be in so much pain that he’s bedridden for a full day. Lenore doesn’t take kindly to insults.

Hector keeps two steps behind the redhead as she leads him deeper into the dungeon. He recalls watching her walk away after one of her visits to the cell they’d first kept him in. He’d admired the way her arms framed her figure so elegantly, the way her skirt swayed with the swing of her hips. _I make peace, and because of that people think I’m soft_ —she’d even warned him, blatantly, that she wasn’t what she appeared, and he’d still barreled right into this situation. She’s deadly gorgeous, and now he can’t even trick himself into seeing the gorgeous facade. She’s nothing but cruelty and death.

As if she can read his thoughts, she casts him a minxy look over her shoulder.

He realizes, suddenly, where she’s leading him, and his airway constricts. They’re going to the cells, the very same ones they’d kept him in after Carmilla had dragged him here. His feet stumble and come to an involuntary stop.

Lenore’s lips curl. She’s enjoying this.

“Come now, you don’t think I’m taking you back there for good, do you?”

“No—No. I just…”

“I haven’t been cruel to you, Hector. You have a good home and a good life because of me, and you’ve given us no reason to put you back in a cell. You _wouldn’t_ give us any reason to. You’re loyal.”

“Of course,” he feels like choking on the words, in part because he knows they’re true. Not that he feels any loyalty to his keepers, but that he can’t bear to think of betrayal because the consequences of even the slightest screw up would be so severe.

“Good boy. Come along.”

A few turns and they’re in the very same holding area Hector had once been kept in, naked and beaten and broken. Lenore orders the solitary guard out, and Hector’s gaze catches on one of the cells. There’s a person crouched in the back, obscured by the darkness.

“I want you to meet our newest visitor,” Lenore says. She pulls a key from a chain around her neck and unlocks the cell, stepping in before Hector and closing the door after him. They must have broken the person already, Hector thinks. She wouldn't have been so bold opening the door unless she was certain the person couldn’t flee. In fact, she’s so sure of herself that she steps right to the back of the cell. Hector barely follows, stopping halfway.

It’s a young man, with long yellow hair and sharp gold eyes. He’s shackled to the wall with a collar around his neck to prevent him from going far, but Hector knows the look in his eyes. He’s seen it in trapped animals. Step too close and they’ll lash out. Whoever he is, he’s dangerous even shackled to the wall. Maybe not to Lenore, but Hector doesn’t have the advantage of being immortal.

“Hector, meet Alucard.”

Hector feels like he’s falling though he’s still standing upright, staring at the prisoner. Alucard. He knows that name.

“Alucard, meet Hector. Hector was one of your father’s forgemasters before he betrayed him to help us.”

The golden eyes turn to him, cut right through him. Hector can’t help but think of a wolf—powerful, hungry, dangerous.

“You had the sense to recognize he was mad but not the sense to recognize she is?” Alucard’s voice is soft and even, neat words framed by the fangs in his mouth. It’s Hector’s inner voice, come to life. Strange to hear these thoughts echoed by another living person.

Lenore snaps her fingers before Hector can formulate a reply, and Alucard is convulsing on the ground, pulling at the collar around his neck. She snaps again and he stops, gasping for air.

“Don’t be rude.”

“You’re not making your case for sanity very well, are you?”

She snaps again, sending him back into a fit. The collar, Hector realizes, must be something like the magical ring around his finger, though based on what he’s seen of Alucard so far, he can’t imagine him swearing his loyalty to Lenore or anyone. Hector wonders if this is what he looks like when Lenore or the others use the ring to punish him. Pathetic and weak, straining for any semblance of relief. It wracks every limb of Alucard’s body—even his feet are tucked oddly, straining against the ground. His mouth is half-open in something between a scream and a whimper.

“Stop it.” Hector’s hand is on Lenore’s shoulder—lost somewhere in his thoughts, he’d crossed the room without knowing it. “Stop, this isn’t necessary.”

Lenore looks at his hand, then up at him. “You’re so _soft_ , Hector.”

Alucard is still convulsing at their feet. Hector swears he can feel the pain emanating from him. He does everything he can to not look. “Please, just… stop.”

She looks at him for a long moment, maybe curiously, then snaps. Alucard gasps for air, braced on all fours. Hector can barely stand to look at him. It scares him.

“You would do this to one of your own?” Hector says weakly. He’s known Lenore is cruel for months now, but that cruelty has never been directed toward other vampires. It’s always directed toward humans—people she considers lesser than she and her sisters. It’s a distinction he’s always understood. This… this is something different.

Lenore gives him a droll look. “Don’t insult me. He’s not one of my kind. He’s a mutt.” Her expression brightens, “You may like that about him.”

He’d never paid much mind to gossip around Dracula’s castle, but the rumors that Dracula had loved a human woman had even reached Hector. He’d have to have kept his head under a rock to avoid them. He’d never thought much of the rumor—it hardly seemed something of concern to him at the time. Now that he’s had more time to reflect on how exactly he landed in this situation, it seems a more and more important detail.

But Lenore’s outright rejection of Alucard simply because his mother was human seems… bizarre to the point it’s utterly jarring. He can’t help another glance to the wheezing man on the ground. Alucard finally catches his breath and rolls onto his seat, pushing his back against the wall and giving Lenore a deathly glare.

She doesn’t notice it, or at least she doesn’t care, because she swoops down and places her fingers beneath Alucard’s chin to tilt his face up toward them.

“He’s pretty, don’t you think, Hector?”

A wildly fast change of subject. She’s being flirty again, which he knows he needs to respond correctly to, but his mind is still caught on her assertion Alucard isn’t a vampire despite the fangs in his mouth.

“Er… I’m not the best to ask about that. He’s a little… male for my taste.” He feels helpless to comment any further on the subject. He glances at the blond, “No offense.”

Alucard jerks his chin from Lenore’s touch, “None taken. You’re a little tall for mine.”

Hector opens his mouth to say something. He closes it. Of all the cultural quirks he’s had to grow accustomed to working around vampires, their seemingly collective detachment from gender in mates is the one that still catches him off guard.

Lenore claps her hands together, “I think I may have him join us eventually.”

Perhaps when sex is so detached from the concept of reproduction, gender becomes less important. Or maybe when you’re bound to live hundreds of years strictly heteronormative behavior seems too limiting, like— “What?”

Lenore draws the key from her neck and hands it to Hector, “Best get used to him. He’ll be in this cell for a while now. You’re welcome to visit him whenever. The collar has him restrained; you don’t need to fear for your safety.”

The cell door clangs shut behind her, and he watches her until she’s out the heavy wooden door. The familiar feel of the scene makes cold sweat run down his back.

He turns to the vampire. Alucard is dressed in a sleek black coat and white top, though the fabric is torn and dirtied from whatever spat landed him here. But what catches Hector’s eye isn’t the clothing—it’s his hand. Alucard is wearing a ring, one Hector immediately recognizes. A wide silver band with a narrow, patterned engraving around the edges. He’s seen it before, on the finger of Alucard’s father.

“I’m going to guess she isn’t talking about dinner when she says she wants me to join the two of you.”

“Correct.” That ring is important. It’s the most important thing Hector has seen in ages. Maybe, he thinks, the most important thing in his entire life.

Alucard’s fingers curl and he flicks a pebble across the stone floor in a miniature act of rage. “Great.”

“Can I give you some advice?” Hector asks, finally ripping his gaze from the ring and bringing it to meet Alucard’s.

“I suppose that may be helpful.”

More than he can realize right now, Hector thinks.

“Don’t piss her off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


	2. Chapter 2

The parlor in the home they keep Hector in is decorated in lavish velvet seating and polished, dark wood furniture. After leaving it untouched for months, Hector realized it was prime space to store the volumes of books he’d been hoarding—one of the few things from the outside that Lenore lets him have. Stacks of them cover the floor and the furniture, lay open on the tables at random pages like a scattered map of his whims. They are the only place he finds comfort anymore. Lenore seems to even realize how good they are for him. She never denies his requests for more, and sometimes she feigns interest and asks him about what’s in them.

He has seven books open, sprawled around him on the floor, all regarding a subject he always thought he was well-versed in: resurrection. The books make him feel that he’s not nearly as competent as he thought.

There are differences between standard forging, as he does with the nightcreatures he’s creating for the sisters, and resurrection. His work for Lenore and her sisters requires opening a pathway for a soul to manifest in an abandoned body. A resurrection—a more complex process—requires putting a specific soul back into the body it once inhabited. There’s a sort of link between a soul and the body it was housed in. The soul wants to return to that shell, the pathway is natural for it, so the challenge lies in finding the soul and seeing its safe passage back to its shell.

He’s performed standard resurrections before, but what he hasn’t ever tried is coaxing a specific soul into an unfamiliar body. There’s no draw to lure the soul to the new vessel. The key, he’s gathered from his research, is to make the vessel feel more like home. You need an item that held great significance to the individual during their life, something their soul would yearn for.

Something like a wedding ring.

Even with a suitable item, the process is complex. But Hector thinks he can do it. So as he sits, surrounded by the wisdom of countless ancient books, he stews over his biggest dilemma: How exactly does he get the ring from Alucard’s finger?

**

Hector’s knees feel weaker with each step he takes toward the prisoner’s cells. He’d have thought that after so many months of being allowed to roam the castle the fear might have gone away, but just walking the path back to the cells by himself makes his palms clammy. He stops more than once on the short journey, just to lean against a wall and breathe and remind himself he’s being utterly ridiculous.

It’s been days since his initial visit to Alucard’s cell. Most of it was spent researching, reassuring himself he’s capable of pulling off the technical side of his prospective goal. But the logistics of a resurrection seem like a cakewalk compared to getting the ring from Alucard and pulling everything off without alerting any of the sisters. He pushes all thoughts of the sisters aside and focuses on the task at hand: Getting the ring. If Alucard were fully himself, Hector is certain it would be impossible. He’d simply be too fast and too strong for Hector to outmaneuver. But Lenore had left Hector alone with Alucard and indicated that he was perfectly safe. The collar around Alucard’s neck must do more than just cause him pain.

He pauses just before the threshold to the keeping area. He takes a deep breath and enters.

It is, much to his surprise, vacant. The usual guard is not at his post. Stepping across the cobbled stone floor, he wonders what Carmilla might do to the guard for their failure. Forgetting to watch a prisoner would be bad enough… forgetting to watch the son of Dracula seems like the sort of egregious error Carmilla wouldn’t hesitate to cut a throat over.

But the guard’s absence is hardly an issue relative to what he finds next—Alucard’s cell is empty.

The hair on the back of his neck stands on end. He can see only two possibilities: either the sisters have taken Alucard elsewhere, or he has escaped due to an inattentive guard. If the sisters have him everything is fine, but if he’s escaped… well…

_Good for him._

Hector’s chest feels like it’s splitting open because he knows there’s only one thing he can do.

**

He finds Lenore in her study, leafing through a stack of very old looking papers. Her crimson eyes rise to him and her lids fall suggestively.

“Hector, how are you?”

“Alucard is missing.”

The three words had ripped him apart as he searched for her, but now that he stands before her they come out so much easier than he expected. For just a moment, he can’t decide if he’s more terrified of Lenore or of himself. But he had to tell her. If any of the sisters found out he knew and didn’t say anything, they’d have flayed him alive.

Lenore’s lips slide into an easy half-smile, “He’s not, but thank you for alerting me. Morana has him.”

Which means only one thing. His skin feels like it’s coated in slime just thinking about what Morana treats her victims to.

Hector’s lips twitch with words he can’t say. The only one he allows out: “Why?”

Lenore lets out a very soft sigh, “You really are too soft. He hasn’t quite processed his situation, Hector. He needs to be tamed.”

The word makes his stomach flip. “But… why? Just throw him in a cell and keep him there until he behaves. Leave him for months or a year or a decade or however long it takes. Morana’s methods are… unnecessary.”

“Carmilla wanted him publicly executed as a show of the Council’s strength. I convinced her he was of more use to us alive.” Lenore frowns at him. “Hector, this is the merciful route. We just need him to behave.”

“But—”

Her frown twitches and the rest of his objection catches in his throat.

“That’s enough, Hector.” She turns back to her papers, “I have work to do. Leave.”

 _Just for once, fucking listen to me,_ he wants so badly to snap back at her. Dismissed like some minor annoyance in her day, like his concerns don’t matter, like…

Like a puppy, yapping for attention.

He grinds his teeth the entire way back to his workstation, where a pile of corpses waits for him. His thoughts are a mangled mess, too erratic to do any worthwhile work, so he paces the room and tries to quell the overwhelming urge to punch something. The pent-up anger courses through his shoulders, makes his back so stiff the area between his shoulder blades begins to ache. He paces, paces, paces, hoping the movement might make some of the rage burn away. Finally, he hoists a corpse onto his worktable.

It’s one of Morana’s; the difference between a corpse mauled by a creature and one picked apart with terrible precision isn’t difficult to spot. The corpse is far too short to be Alucard—it’s just an anonymous, unfortunate soul with his lungs on the outside of his body. Hector reaches for the hammer resting against the wall but freezes just as his fingertips reach it.

In the dim light cast by the wall-mounted candles, he can just barely see the lungs grow, shrink, grow, shrink.

Hector’s mouth goes sour. There’s always something so terrible and unexpected about the living.

He drops his fingers from the hammer and reaches into the calf of his boot where he keeps a small blade hidden. If there’s any sliver of consciousness left in the man, he must be in a world of pain. Hector steps to the table and places his gloved fingers under the man’s head, gently cradling the base of it. His eyes are gone, nothing but empty pits of black gaping up at Hector, and he finds himself wondering what color they once were. Hector flinches and slides the blade into the base of his skull.

**

Time in the castle passes in the most curious way. The days and weeks blur and drag so that sometimes Hector can’t tell if a day has passed or if weeks have flown by. Hours sometimes feel like eons and months feel like an instant. Hector can’t pinpoint if his unwinding grip on time is a consequence of the castle itself—the great cavernous thing with long, windowless stretches—or if his own mind is simply playing tricks on him. How much time passes between his conversation with Lenore and the day he enters his quarters to find a massacre is entirely questionable.

The first thing he sees is the great smear of red. It starts with a wide pool at his feet and cuts up, across the otherwise pristine, white tiles, dribbles across a rug leaving dark stains on the burgundy fabric. A chill creeps through Hector, makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It’s like an injured animal dragged itself through his home, but no animal that big could manage to sneak into his home unnoticed.

He follows the path through his abode, to the hallway where a red streak stains the wall, accompanied by a clear handprint. A noise comes from the bathroom—clanging, rustling, cursing. Dread settles low in Hector’s stomach. He already knows what he’ll find.

In one of the only rooms Hector can seem to find any semblance of peace, Alucard is seated on the floor near a marble counter, his back slouched against the wall. His blond locks turn to strings of red around his shoulders. His once-white shirt looks as though it was made of crimson fabric, and his skin is streaked with blood down to his bare feet. Items from the top of the counter litter the floor around him, presumably pulled off in his search for the one thing he needed—a towel that he has wrapped around his right hand, resting in his lap.

A quick flame of fury licks up Hector’s spine. Why would Morana leave him here in such a condition? Is she trying to send a message to Hector? And what sort of message could she possibly be trying to send? He’s barely even seen the woman since he arrived here—his dealings are most often with Lenore and very occasionally with Carmilla. He can’t think of anything he might have done to piss off Morana.

He gets on his knees next to the vampire, whose head hangs facing his lap. He’s very still. Hector reaches out to move the strings of blood-stained hair to the side to see if he’s conscious, but before his fingertips touch the strands he’s met with a solid kick to the chest. It knocks Hector back onto his seat in a smear of blood with a grunt as Alucard scrambles away from him. Hector gasps for the breath that was knocked out of him, hands slipping slightly on the blood-slick tiles. Alucard looks like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible, huddled into the corner where the wall and the counter meet. The toweled hand is clutched protectively to his chest and his pupils are so dilated Hector can barely see any hint of golden iris.

A stray observation passes through Hector’s mind that _that_ —the terrified, weak looking thing trying to hide in the corner—is the son of the most powerful vampire that was.

Hector pushes back onto his knees and holds his palms up to Alucard to show he means no harm. He’s not sure if the gesture is of any use—Alucard seems slightly out of his mind.

“I’m not Morana. I can help you. Let me see your hand.”

Maybe it’s Hector’s voice, or maybe it’s simply that it’s not Morana’s voice, but Alucard shakes his head as if trying to shed the fog of fear had consumed him.

“I’m fine.” The words come with a remarkably calm, lucid tone, in spite of how obviously mistaken they are.

Hector blinks at the blood-soaked vampire. “Right. Can I see your hand, then?”

“It will be fine. It’s only a small wound.”

“I’m sure. Maybe I can help it be fine faster.” He shuffles forward on his knees, “Let me see it, please?”

Alucard keeps his eyes locked intensely on Hector as he withdraws his good hand from the bundle. Hector moves slowly, as he used to when helping trapped, frightened animals. He peels back the layers of the towel, each more red-soaked than the last. When he reaches Alucard’s hand, an involuntary cringe consumes him.

“Yikes.”

“It will be fine.”

Alucard _must_ be completely delirious. The hand is split down the center from mid-palm to the tender web of flesh between the third and fourth digits, rendering it more like a crab claw than a hand. Hector is used to seeing things like this, things much worse than this, but usually only on corpses. He covers it gingerly with the towel.

“It will be fine,” Alucard says again. His pupils are still unusually large. He must be in a great deal of pain.

“Right,” Hector huffs and pushes to his feet. He makes his way back through the hallway and the parlor to the kitchen. When he’d first been introduced to the space, it was neatly equipped with ample counter space and a wood fire stove—he hadn’t even considered using it for making food. He’d stocked the shelves with bottles of powders and oils, roots and dried plants, and stacks and stacks of books. Forging had taken most of his attention over the years and his interest in most alchemy had waned, but since he began his work for Carmilla it had become a convenient distraction from everything he’d grown to hate.

He rummages through a few shelves until he finds the powder he’s looking for, grabs a vial of liquid to dissolve it in, and returns to the bathroom.

“I’m giving you a painkiller. Will a normal human dose be sufficient for you, or do you require more?”

Alucard mumbles something about nettles and lets his head roll lazily from side to side against the wall, an apathetic no, and Hector realizes it’s effectively a slap across the face. The man’s hand is split in two and he’s being a diva about what medicine Hector gives him.

Hector crouches next to him and lowers his voice because in a castle full of vampires you never know who’s listening. “I’ve lived with these four for months now and you don’t think I’ve found a painkiller that actually works?”

Alucard’s head stops lolling about and he gives Hector a hard look. His eyelids flutter. “Normal,” he finally says.

Hector doses twice what he’d give himself, shakes the vial to dissolve it, and pushes it into Alucard’s hand.

Delirious with pain, and Alucard still holds the vial up to scrutinize the brown-tinged liquid. He sniffs the mouth of the vial. Evidently he approves because he tilts his head back and takes the whole thing in one shot. For some reason, it’s only then that Hector notices Alucard still has the collar around his neck. Hector’s had a leather lead, but Alucard’s lead is a narrow silver chain that falls from his neck to the floor. He follows the hairline of the chain with his eyes, across the floor, and out the door into the hallway. It’s left little snake-like prints in the trail of blood. He can’t imagine such a fine chain could hold a vampire, but he also never would have imagined a tiny ring would steal his free will. He doubts the impossible and the terrible less and less every day.

Hector takes the empty vial from Alucard and returns to his feet, “It should take effect shortly. I’ll find some bandages for you.”

The chain is so thin that when Hector stands upright he can’t see it. He makes his way back to the kitchen where he finds a fresh roll of gauze under a counter and cuts back through the parlor, only to be met by Lenore.

She stands just inside the entryway, surveying the mess which, Hector now realizes, looks even worse than before because he’s tracked bloody footprints back and forth. Her eyes snap from the bloody scene to him and her expression makes him stop dead in his tracks. Her eyes are wide, jaw slightly slack so he can just barely see the fangs between her lips.

She’s _terrified_.

She pinches her eyes shut and heaves a deep sigh that makes her shoulders drop under her fur stole. “Oh Hector, you’re okay.”

Terrified… for him?

She steps through the pool of Alucard’s blood and joins Hector, putting a hand on the side of his face to gently stroke his cheekbone. “You are okay, right? Nobody hurt you?”

“Er… yes?” Hector is very confused, and his mind is on the bleeding, bisected hand in the bathroom so he can’t bother to hide it. He shakes his head, mostly to make her stop touching him, and steps around her, “Alucard is in the bathroom. Morana left him here…”

A few strides and he’s in the bathroom, peeling back the blood-soaked towel from Alucard’s hand again. Lenore’s heels click against the bathroom tiles as she enters after him, but he barely notices—he pulls back the final layer and the hand… the hand is perfectly fine, other than being covered in blood. The line where it had been split merely looks like a raw scar, and even that is sewing itself back together before Hector’s eyes.

“He’s healing…”

“Of course he is,” Lenore moves next to him to peer down at Alucard. Alucard’s head hangs to one side, eyes closed, mouth partially open… asleep.

“He _is_ part vampire. I doubt he would have been able to defeat his father without vampiric healing abilities.” She pokes Alucard’s shoulder, but he doesn’t stir. “He needs to rest. Give him a day or two.”

The ring, Hector realizes, is on Alucard’s good hand, resting on the floor by his side. His fingers itch to take it, but he can’t possibly do it now without arousing Lenore’s suspicion. But perhaps this is a good opportunity to find out what he’s up against.

“The collar doesn’t stop him from healing?”

Lenore looks at him with a delicate red eyebrow raised.

“You said the collar would keep me safe when you left me alone with him. I had assumed that meant it rendered him more or less human.”

“It weakens him, but it doesn’t make him weak. And it doesn’t impact his regular body functions, like healing or hearing.”

Which is, Hector thinks, about the worst answer he could have gotten. Stealing the ring off Alucard isn’t an option, and neither is overpowering him to take it.

He must not hide his disappointment well, because Lenore’s lids fall slightly and her head tilts. “You’re upset.”

Hector’s mind scrambles for an excuse. “You said I was safe.”

“It was a demonstration of trust, Hector.”

He’d intended for the accusation to distract her from his line of questioning, but her reply snatches his mind away from the ring and leaves him gaping at her. She had handed off her pet in some twisted power move, gambled with his life that Dracula’s son might show him enough kindness to not break his neck on the spot.

“You risked my life.”

She frowns at him, “You were perfectly fine. I wouldn’t have left you there if I wasn’t sure you would be safe.”

“You—”

“I _promised_ you that you would be safe, Hector.” Her tone is so severe it cuts the wind from his throat, “I won’t break my word.”

He grinds his teeth and looks away from her. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’s not a person to her, he’s a pet and a convenient cock when she needs it. But such a blatant demonstration of how little she cares…

He _can’t_ be that unimportant to her. They need him to forge. Person or not, he’s a piece of their grand puzzle that they need to complete the picture, and she surely wouldn’t have risked his life because of that. He latches onto that thought, tries to force it to soothe his mind. It does little to help.

As if it might help repair her image, Lenore gives his arm a gentle squeeze before she stands and steps to the counter. She pulls a clean, folded hand towel from storage and wets it before returning to Alucard’s side.

“We should clean him up,” she says.

Hector can’t even begin to imagine how many hand towels it will take to clean him. They might be better moving him into the tub and running water over him. But before he can make a suggestion, he notices Alucard’s eyes are open, narrow little golden slits glaring at Lenore.

“Don’t touch me.”

She purses her lips and rests the rag in her lap. “So you’re awake. What would you rather have me do, leave you a blood-caked mess?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” she folds the towel into a neat square and places it back on the countertop. “That’s your prerogative. Would you like to sleep on the floor of the bathroom, or shall we move you to your bed?”

He glares at her for a drawn-out, silent moment, then makes a pathetic show of trying to stand upright on his own. He’s blood-soaked and haggard with deep circles under his eyes, and Hector can hardly believe it when he staggers unevenly to his feet. Alucard sways and Hector stands quickly, offering his shoulder.

Hector understands. He really, really does. Alucard told Lenore not to touch him. He wants nothing to do with any of the sisters at the moment. He is, perhaps, a little smarter than Hector was to not grovel at Lenore’s feet after one false demonstration of kindness.

A heavy hand grasps Hector’s shoulder as Alucard pauses to steady himself.

“Do you want help?” Hector asks.

Alucard barely looks at him, barely nods. Hector shifts to offer him better support and says to Lenore, “Where is his room?”

“The spare,” Lenore says.

Hector’s stomach drops at her word.

“My spare room?”

“Where else would I keep him?”

 _Anywhere in the entire fucking giant castle,_ he wants to spit at her.

“Didn’t you notice that’s where he’s chained?” she asks. “I told Morana to put him there when she was done.”

Hector clamps his teeth together with so much pressure a headache starts to bloom in his temples. It’s all he can do to keep from snapping at her. The spare room, his room. The only clean space he can ever catch a wink of sleep.

Alucard falters and his weight leans heavily against Hector’s side.

“Come on,” he grinds the words out and starts down the hallway with Alucard.

Indeed, as they make their way down the short hallway Hector can make out the fine chain trailing into the spare room. As Hector suspected, it isn’t a normal chain. It doesn’t drag behind Alucard when he moves. The lead shortens with Alucard as he walks like he’s being drawn back to the bed.

It’s a stake through Hector’s heart when Alucard collapses into Hector’s bed. He curls onto his side, atop all the blankets, blood-matted hair splayed out behind him in strings. It is, Hector thinks, one of the most dreadful things he’s ever seen.

The chain has shortened to roughly an arm’s length. It lies loosely over the pillow and leads up to the headboard where the end is fastened around a dark wooden beam that runs horizontally between the posts. Hector peers closer and sees that it’s not knotted—it’s looped in one endless chain, links bound together as though it had been specifically designed for the bed.

“Leave him,” Lenore’s voice floats to him from the doorway. Hector flinches.

“You’re sure you want to keep him here?” He asks as he turns to meet her. There must be a way out of this nightmare. She’s taken his freedom, his work, his body… can’t she at least leave him his bed?

“Yes,” Lenore says, pulling the door closed behind him. “It won’t hurt you to have a friend, Hector.”

“I doubt he wants to be friends with someone who was allied with his father.”

Lenore wears a strange, soft look on her face. He hates it. She reaches up and pets the side of his face. “This will be fine, Hector. I told you, I won’t place you in harm’s way. You have my word.”

“What makes you so sure he won’t rip my throat out when you’re not around?”

“He won’t because it’s disadvantageous for him to hurt you.” Her fingers play through strands of his hair, and she pushes them back behind his ear. “You’re more useful to him alive, just as he’s more useful to us alive.”

“What use am I to him?”

She smiles so sweetly he wants to vomit and trails her fingers along his jawline to pinch his chin. “Oh, Hector.”

He’s confused again.

“He thinks you might be the key to helping him get out of here. But you won’t be, because you’re loyal.”

He hates her touch. He hates her. Right now, he hates everything. Dracula’s plan to burn the world to ash makes more and more sense to him.

“And when he realizes that?”

“You worry too much, Hector. Trust me.” She brings her other hand up to the side of his face and draws him closer, kissing him in a way he knows all too well. She draws back and murmurs into his lips, “I was so worried when I came through the door. I thought you might have been hurt.”

 _Not now,_ he pleads silently, because he doesn’t dare make any objections aloud. Lenore always gets what she wants. She kisses him again, pushing him back, across the hallway, toward the door that leads to the bedroom where she makes him fuck her. Her hands sneak under the hem of his shirt, fingers play at the sensitive skin near his hips. All at once, she’s everywhere, all over him, consuming him, and he’s lost. She hasn’t even given a chance to wash Alucard’s blood from his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A HUGE thank you to everyone for being patient with me while I struggled to write this chapter! You should be able to expect updates every week or two moving forward (as long as life doesn't get in the way). Your comments and kudos give me so much motivation. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> [Follow me on Tumblr](https://blindwolfgrasshopper.tumblr.com/) for fic updates, sneak peeks, Castlevania-related talk, and the occasional random Animal Crossing meme! <3


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